Just read an interesting article from Digital Strategist Tom Liacas describing some of the pitfalls that brands find themselves in when they try to use social media as a marketing channel. He describes three de-humanized examples: the psychopath (using times of mass suffering and hardship as a sales opportunity); the robot (endlessly spouting one liners … Continue reading Brands using humans (not humanizing brands)
Category: Themes
News this week comes from eConsultancy is that I have a "to be avoided" job title. Thanks chaps. I have to say that "evangelist" is a title that I've always found a little problematic - partly because as an atheist I find it difficult to relate to religious metaphors, and partly because the metaphor itself … Continue reading Meaningful job titles
Every six months or so I catch up with Euan Semple, a former colleague from my BBC days and someone whom it's useful to occasionally chat with to keep a grip on some sort of reality (or possibly to reinforce our collective madness!). We spent an hour or so chatting yesterday, and one of the … Continue reading Social (network) inclusion
An interesting observation from one of my colleagues this morning - when people interact with a brand on Twitter, it's usually to complain. If I think about my own interactions with brands through social media, then it's probably as follows: - I have conversations with individuals who happen to work at brands - I shout … Continue reading I don’t want a conversation – I just want to vent
2012 was a year topped and tailed by analyst statements that point for me to some interesting changes in the way in which technology is consumed, managed and commissioned by big organisations: in January, Gartner reported that "by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO" (something that has been often repeated, yet … Continue reading Digital Agencies: the new Systems Integrators?
...or, maybe more accurately, a bit of a stock take on how I'm using social media at the moment. Personal Life Is basically Facebook. Occasionally I'll stray into subjects that are work-related on the network, but more than anything I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends (who are on it). Topics of conversation … Continue reading A personal Social Media strategy for 2013…
I've scanned through a lot of 2013 prediction articles in the past few days, and it seems that the idea of self-driving cars is something that is capturing the imagination of many futurologists. To a great extent, cars are already capable of being fairly self-driving; technologies like adaptive cruise control (braking and accelerating), lane assist … Continue reading Self-driving cars
I've just watched a couple of videos that explain how Coca Cola are approaching marketing as a content strategy going forward. Overall the content was thought-provoking, although I'm not sure if the use of cute cartoons was a way to distract from an overly complicated story that verges into Siobhan Sharpe Jubilympics territory a little … Continue reading A new take on Pareto and innovation
So, on the last day of the year, here are the five most popular posts on this blog for the 12 months of 2012: At 5, Innovation in Retail. This is (roughly) the text of a presentation I gave to kick off a hackathon event held at Marks and Spencer in the Autumn. At 4, #innovationeqs. … Continue reading Top 20 posts of 2012 – 5 to 1
The chances that I'm going to read all of these over the next 11 days are slim to zero, but here's what's on my Kindle bookshelf for the holiday period: Switch: Chip & Dan Heath; some thinking about how to engage people to get them to change The Self Illusion: Bruce Hood; or why there … Continue reading Christmas reading
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